Subtitles and Transcript

Al Gore

0:11
I have given the slide show that I gave here two years ago about 2,000 times.I'm giving a short slide show this morningthat I'm giving for the very first time, so --well it's -- I don't want or need to raise the bar,I'm actually trying to lower the bar.Because I've cobbled this togetherto try to meet the challenge of this session.

0:42
And I was reminded by Karen Armstrong's fantastic presentationthat religion really properly understoodis not about belief, but about behavior.Perhaps we should say the same thing about optimism.How dare we be optimistic?Optimism is sometimes characterized as a belief, an intellectual posture.As Mahatma Gandhi famously said,"You must become the change you wish to see in the world."And the outcome about whichwe wish to be optimistic is not going to be createdby the belief alone, except to the extent that the beliefbrings about new behavior. But the word "behavior"is also, I think, sometimes misunderstood in this context.I'm a big advocate of changingthe lightbulbs and buying hybrids,and Tipper and I put 33 solar panels on our house,and dug the geothermal wells, and did all of that other stuff.But, as important as it is to change the lightbulbs,it is more important to change the laws.And when we change our behavior in our daily lives,we sometimes leave out the citizenship partand the democracy part. In order to be optimistic about this,we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy.In order to solve the climate crisis,we have to solve the democracy crisis.And we have one.

2:30
I have been trying to tell this story for a long time.I was reminded of that recently, by a womanwho walked past the table I was sitting at,just staring at me as she walked past. She was in her 70s,looked like she had a kind face. I thought nothing of ituntil I saw from the corner of my eyeshe was walking from the opposite direction,also just staring at me. And so I said, "How do you do?"And she said, "You know, if you dyed your hair black,you would look just like Al Gore." (Laughter)

3:12
Many years ago, when I was a young congressman,I spent an awful lot of time dealing with the challengeof nuclear arms control -- the nuclear arms race.And the military historians taught me,during that quest, that military conflicts are typicallyput into three categories: local battles,regional or theater wars, and the rare but all-importantglobal, world war -- strategic conflicts.And each level of conflict requires a different allocation of resources,a different approach,a different organizational model.Environmental challenges fall into the same three categories,and most of what we think aboutare local environmental problems: air pollution, water pollution,hazardous waste dumps. But there are alsoregional environmental problems, like acid rainfrom the Midwest to the Northeast, and from Western Europeto the Arctic, and from the Midwestout the Mississippi into the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico.And there are lots of those. But the climate crisisis the rare but all-importantglobal, or strategic, conflict.Everything is affected. And we have to organize our responseappropriately. We need a worldwide, global mobilizationfor renewable energy, conservation, efficiencyand a global transition to a low-carbon economy.We have work to do. And we can mobilize resourcesand political will. But the political willhas to be mobilized, in order to mobilize the resources.

4:56
Let me show you these slides here.I thought I would start with the logo. What's missing here,of course, is the North Polar ice cap.Greenland remains. Twenty-eight years ago, this is what thepolar ice cap -- the North Polar ice cap -- looked likeat the end of the summer, at the fall equinox.This last fall, I went to the Snow and Ice Data Centerin Boulder, Colorado, and talked to the researchershere in Monterey at the Naval Postgraduate Laboratory.This is what's happened in the last 28 years.To put it in perspective, 2005 was the previous record.Here's what happened last fallthat has really unnerved the researchers.The North Polar ice cap is the same size geographically --doesn't look quite the same size --but it is exactly the same size as the United States,minus an area roughly equal to the state of Arizona.The amount that disappeared in 2005was equivalent to everything east of the Mississippi.The extra amount that disappeared last fallwas equivalent to this much. It comes back in the winter,but not as permanent ice, as thin ice --vulnerable. The amount remaining could be completely gonein summer in as little as five years.That puts a lot of pressure on Greenland.Already, around the Arctic Circle --this is a famous village in Alaska. This is a townin Newfoundland. Antarctica. Latest studies from NASA.The amount of a moderate-to-severe snow meltingof an area equivalent to the size of California.

7:10
"They were the best of times,they were the worst of times": the most famous opening sentencein English literature. I want to share brieflya tale of two planets. Earth and Venusare exactly the same size. Earth's diameteris about 400 kilometers larger, but essentially the same size.They have exactly the same amount of carbon.But the difference is, on Earth, most of the carbonhas been leeched over time out of the atmosphere,deposited in the ground as coal, oil,natural gas, etc. On Venus, most of itis in the atmosphere. The difference is that our temperatureis 59 degrees on average. On Venus,it's 855. This is relevant to our current strategyof taking as much carbon out of the ground as quickly as possible,and putting it into the atmosphere.It's not because Venus is slightly closer to the Sun.It's three times hotter than Mercury,which is right next to the Sun. Now, briefly,here's an image you've seen, as one of the only old images,but I show it because I want to briefly give you CSI: Climate.

8:19
The global scientific community says:man-made global warming pollution, put into the atmosphere,thickening this, is trapping more of the outgoing infrared.You all know that. At the lastIPCC summary, the scientists wanted to say,"How certain are you?" They wanted to answer that "99 percent."The Chinese objected, and so the compromise was"more than 90 percent."Now, the skeptics say, "Oh, wait a minute,this could be variations in this energycoming in from the sun." If that were true,the stratosphere would be heated as well as thelower atmosphere, if it's more coming in.If it's more being trapped on the way out, then you wouldexpect it to be warmer here and cooler here. Here is the lower atmosphere.Here's the stratosphere: cooler.CSI: Climate.

9:13
Now, here's the good news. Sixty-eight percent of Americans now believethat human activity is responsiblefor global warming. Sixty-nine percent believe that the Earth is heating upin a significant way. There has been progress,but here is the key: when given a listof challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom.What is missing is a sense of urgency.If you agree with the factual analysis,but you don't feel the sense of urgency,where does that leave you?Well, the Alliance for Climate Protection, which I headin conjunction with Current TV -- who did this pro bono --did a worldwide contest to do commercials on how to communicate this.This is the winner.

10:59
NBC -- I'll show all of the networks here -- the top journalistsfor NBC asked 956 questions in 2007of the presidential candidates: two of them were aboutthe climate crisis. ABC: 844 questions, two about the climate crisis.Fox: two. CNN: two. CBS: zero.From laughs to tears -- this is one of the oldertobacco commercials.So here's what we're doing.This is gasoline consumption in all of these countries. And us.But it's not just the developed nations.The developing countries are now following usand accelerating their pace. And actually,their cumulative emissions this year are the equivalentto where we were in 1965. And they're catching upvery dramatically. The total concentrations:by 2025, they will be essentially where we were in 1985.If the wealthy countries were completely missingfrom the picture, we would still have this crisis.But we have given to the developing countriesthe technologies and the ways of thinkingthat are creating the crisis. This is in Bolivia --over thirty years.

12:58
This is peak fishing in a few seconds. The '60s.'70s. '80s. '90s. We have to stop this. And the good news is that we can.We have the technologies.We have to have a unified view of how to go about this:the struggle against poverty in the worldand the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions,all has a single, very simple solution.

13:32
People say, "What's the solution?" Here it is.Put a price on carbon. We need a CO2 tax, revenue neutral,to replace taxation on employment, which was invented by Bismarck --and some things have changedsince the 19th century.In the poor world, we have to integrate the responsesto poverty with the solutions to the climate crisis.Plans to fight poverty in Ugandaare mooted, if we do not solve the climate crisis.

14:10
But responses can actually make a huge differencein the poor countries. This is a proposalthat has been talked about a lot in Europe.This was from Nature magazine. These are concentratingsolar, renewable energy plants, linked in a so-called "supergrid"to supply all of the electrical powerto Europe, largely from developing countries -- high-voltage DC currents.This is not pie in the sky; this can be done.

14:52
We need to do it for our own economy.The latest figures show that the old modelis not working. There are a lot of great investmentsthat you can make. If you are investing in tar sandsor shale oil, then you have a portfoliothat is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets.And it is based on an old model.Junkies find veins in their toes when the onesin their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sandsand coal shale is the equivalent. Here are just a few of the investmentsthat I personally think make sense.I have a stake in these, so I'll have a disclaimer there.But geothermal, concentrating solar,advanced photovoltaics, efficiency and conservation.

15:50
You've seen this slide before, but there's a change.The only two countries that didn't ratify-- and now there's only one. Australia had an election.And there was a campaign in Australiathat involved television and Internet and radio commercialsto lift the sense of urgency for the people there.And we trained 250 people to give the slide showin every town and village and city in Australia.Lot of other things contributed to it,but the new Prime Minister announced thathis very first priority would be to change Australia's positionon Kyoto, and he has. Now, they came to an awarenesspartly because of the horrible drought that they have had.This is Lake Lanier. My friend Heidi Cullensaid that if we gave droughts names the way we give hurricanes names,we'd call the one in the southeast now Katrina,and we would say it's headed toward Atlanta.We can't wait for the kind of droughtAustralia had to change our political culture.Here's more good news. The cities supporting Kyoto in the U.S.are up to 780 -- and I thought I saw one go by there,just to localize this -- which is good news.

17:16
Now, to close, we heard a couple of days agoabout the value of making individual heroism so commonplacethat it becomes banal or routine.What we need is another hero generation. Those of us who are alivein the United States of Americatoday especially, but also the rest of the world,have to somehow understand that historyhas presented us with a choice -- just as Jill [Bolte] Taylor was figuring outhow to save her life while she was distractedby the amazing experience that she was going through.We now have a culture of distraction.But we have a planetary emergency.And we have to find a way to create,in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.I wish I could find the words to convey this.This was another hero generationthat brought democracy to the planet.Another that ended slavery. And that gave women the right to vote.We can do this. Don't tell me that we don't have the capacity to do it.If we had just one week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq War,we could be well on the way to solving this challenge.We have the capacity to do it.

19:12
One final point: I'm optimistic, because I believewe have the capacity, at moments of great challenge,to set aside the causes of distraction and rise to the challengethat history is presenting to us.Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisisby saying, "Oh, this is so terrible.What a burden we have." I would like to ask youto reframe that. How many generationsin all of human history have had the opportunityto rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts?A challenge that can pull from usmore than we knew we could do? I think we ought to approachthis challenge with a sense of profound joyand gratitude that we are the generationabout which, a thousand years from now,philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrateby saying, they were the ones that found it within themselvesto solve this crisis and lay the basisfor a bright and optimistic human future.

21:08
Let's do that. Thank you very much.

21:35
Chris Anderson: For so many people at TED, there is deep painthat basically a design issueon a voting form --one bad design issue meant that your voice wasn't being heardlike that in the last eight years in a positionwhere you could make these things come true.That hurts.

21:54
Al Gore: You have no idea. (Laughter)

22:04
CA: When you look at what the leading candidatesin your own party are doing now -- I mean, there's --are you excited by their plans on global warming?

22:21
AG: The answer to the question is hard for mebecause, on the one hand, I think thatwe should feel really great about the factthat the Republican nominee -- certain nominee --John McCain, and both of the finalistsfor the Democratic nomination -- all three have a very differentand forward-leaning positionon the climate crisis. All three have offered leadership,and all three are very different from the approach takenby the current administration. And I thinkthat all three have also been responsible inputting forward plans and proposals. But the campaign dialogue that --as illustrated by the questions --that was put together by theLeague of Conservation Voters, by the way, the analysis of all the questions --and, by the way, the debates have all beensponsored by something that goes by the Orwellian label,"Clean Coal." Has anybody noticed that?Every single debate has been sponsored by "Clean Coal.""Now, even lower emissions!"

23:39
The richness and fullness of the dialoguein our democracy has not laid the basisfor the kind of bold initiative that is really needed.So they're saying the right things and they may --whichever of them is elected -- may do the right thing,but let me tell you: when I came back from Kyotoin 1997, with a feeling of great happinessthat we'd gotten that breakthrough there,and then confronted the United States Senate,only one out of 100 senators was willing to voteto confirm, to ratify that treaty. Whatever the candidates sayhas to be laid alongside what the people say.

24:27
This challenge is part of the fabricof our whole civilization.CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally.And now we mechanized that process. Changing that patternrequires a scope, a scale, a speed of changethat is beyond what we have done in the past.So that's why I began by saying,be optimistic in what you do, but be an active citizen.Demand -- change the light bulbs,but change the laws. Change the global treaties.We have to speak up. We have to solve this democracy -- this --We have sclerosis in our democracy. And we have to change that.Use the Internet. Go on the Internet.Connect with people. Become very active as citizens.Have a moratorium -- we shouldn'thave any new coal-fired generating plantsthat aren't able to capture and store CO2, which means we have toquickly build these renewable sources.Now, nobody is talking on that scale. But I do believethat between now and November, it is possible.This Alliance for Climate Protectionis going to launch a nationwide campaign --grassroots mobilization, television ads, Internet ads,radio, newspaper -- with partnerships with everybodyfrom the Girl Scouts to the hunters and fishermen.

25:56
We need help. We need help.

26:00
CA: In terms of your own personal role going forward,Al, is there something more than thatyou would like to be doing?

26:07
AG: I have prayed that I would be able to find the answerto that question. What can I do?Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "If the futureof all human civilization depended on me, what would I do?How would I be?" It does depend on all of us,but again, not just with the light bulbs.We, most of us here, are Americans. We have a democracy.We can change things, but we have to actively change.What's needed really is a higher level of consciousness.And that's hard to --that's hard to create -- but it is coming.There's an old African proverb that some of you knowthat says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone;if you want to go far, go together." We have to go far, quickly.So we have to have a change in consciousness.A change in commitment. A new sense of urgency.A new appreciation for the privilegethat we have of undertaking this challenge.